Call for Submissions on Theme of "Roots": ROPES

 

How do I submit my work to ROPES?For writing, you may submit your material using the written submission Google Form.

For visual art, you may submit your material using the visual submission Google Form.

Before submitting, please read the below submissions guidelines carefully.

What is the submission deadline?

The deadline for written submissions is Wednesday 1 January, 2025. 

For visual submissions, the deadline is Friday 21 February, 2025. 

What is the topic or theme for this year's submissions?

The theme for ROPES issue 33 is roots. We encourage writers and artists to explore and develop their own unique interpretations of this theme. For our team, it has connotations of place, origins, family, nature, classical myths and tales, and core values and meanings.

You may choose to interpret this theme in an entirely different way, so long as it is somehow connected to the idea of roots. We can't wait to read your work!

What kind of material can I submit?

ROPES welcomes both written and visual submissions from Irish and international writers of all origins and backgrounds. We encourage work from first-time writers, members of minority groups or underrepresented communities, as well as writing as Gaeilge. We accept a variety of written and visual work, including, but not limited to, fiction, flash fiction, poetry, memoirs, essays, art, and photography. All submissions should be original, previously unpublished work.

If you are eager to share a piece of work (within the designated word count: see below) but are unsure about its category or content, feel free to send a query to:

ropeslitmag.submissions@gmail.com

What is the word count?

Our general guideline word count is as follows:

Fiction: Max 3,000 words (ONE piece per submission)
Non-fiction (memoirs, essays, other): Max 3000 words (ONE piece per submission)
Flash fiction: Max 500 words (up to THREE pieces per submission)
Poetry: Max 40 lines per poem (up to FOUR poems per submission)

If you are submitting prose or any type of long-form content, please note the word count of the piece in the document. Please ensure that multiple pieces (poetry, flashes, etc) are compiled within a single document.

Can I submit more than once?

We allow one submission per category (this may comprise a singular piece or multiple, depending on the categories listed above).

Should you choose to submit in multiple categories, we ask that you treat these as separate submissions and complete a new Google Form each time. Please note that your submission will not be considered unless submitted through our Google Form.

What about visual submissions?

For visual submissions, we require +300 PPI.

What about the formatting?

All writing should be formatted in a clear font with easy-to-read spacing. All submissions should be in PDF, .doc or .docx format.

Should I include my name?

Our selection and editing process is entirely anonymous, so please do not include your name anywhere on your submitted files.

Can I submit to ROPES if I’ve already submitted somewhere else?

We are happy to take simultaneous submissions (provided the work is original), but we ask that you notify us should your work be accepted elsewhere.

Will I receive feedback on my work?

Please note that we will be unable to offer feedback on unsuccessful applications due to a high volume of submissions.

Writing Competition: Slippery Elm Prize

Slippery Elm Prize Guidelines

$1000 prizes in Poetry & Prose

2025 Judges: Timothy Geiger in Poetry; TBA in Prose

Submissions open annually in the fall, and close at midnight EST on Feb. 1st.

All contest entrants will receive a copy of the winning issue and be considered for publication.

All entries should be original and previously unpublished; all rights to the submitted works must belong to the submitter.

Simultaneous submissions are fine.

$15 entry fee for up to 3 poems (no line/length limit) or one essay or story (5000 words maximum). Multiple entries are fine.

All entries must be sent through our Submittable interface.

All contest entries will be considered for publication in Slippery Elm’s print issue.

We welcome General Submissions from all, but those currently or recently affiliated with the University of Findlay or Slippery Elm should refrain from entering the Contests. Although judging will be blind, we wish to avoid any potential appearance of conflict of interest.

Submit your entry here.

Call for Submissions: Variant Literature

Submit November 24 through December 31 for consideration for March 2025 issue.

General 

• Please submit only once per submission period unless otherwise invited.

• We do not accept e-mail submissions; all work must be submitted through Submittable.

• Please send all work in one file.

• We aim to respond to your work within two months; our average response time is closer to one month.

• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

• We do not accept previously published works.

Poetry

There are no format restrictions. Limit your submission to 5 poems totaling no more than 10 pages.

Fiction

Authors should limit submissions to no more than 20 pages (5500 words).

Flash and Micro Series

Please send ONE piece of flash fiction or flash nonfiction (1200 words or less) or a connected series of THREE micros (250 to 400 words each).

What happened to the nonfiction genre?

If your nonfiction is less than 1200 words, submit to the flash genre. We are not looking for longer nonfiction.

Payment We pay $10 per accepted story, poem, or micro series. 

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: The Evergreen Review

 

Since its inception in 1957, The Evergreen Review has sought out writers and artists who embrace experimentation and tell stories that aren’t often heard in mainstream spaces. Evergreen now welcomes general submissions of original fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and video art—and we’re especially excited by works which blur the lines between multiple genres and forms. 

 

We pay essayists, short story writers, poets, and videographers a minimum of $250. We will also consider excerpts from forthcoming books, as long as they haven't been published elsewhere. Read our current issue to get a sense of what we like.

Because we are a volunteer editorial staff, it may take us several months to get back to you.

*****We ask that you please do NOT submit additional work if you're still awaiting our decision on a submission currently in the queue.*****

For poetry: send 5–10 of your best unpublished poems directly to Jee Leong Koh at:

 

 jeeleong@evergreenreview.com

 

 —no fee is required for poetry submissions.

Our $5.00 submission fee helps cover contributor payments and general operating expenses. If you are unable to afford it, you may choose not to pay the fee upon submission. This option is meant to support writers facing severe financial hardship, so please only opt to waive the fee if it is absolutely necessary.

For questions about our submission process, contact:

 

info@evergreenreview.com

 

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions on Theme of "We Love All Voices": Conjunctions

We will accept submissions for our spring 2025 print issue, Conjunctions: 84, We Love All We Voices, via Submittable from November 27 – December 15, 2024. All submissions will also be considered for our weekly online magazine.

Note: If you miss the Submittable window, we are also open for submissions by postal mail year-round. Please see below for instructions.

ONLINE MAGAZINE

Submissions are open year-round by postal mail for our biannual print issues and weekly online magazine, which is not subject to thematic restrictions. Please see below for instructions.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Submissions are open year-round by postal mail. To submit via mail, please send your manuscript to our editorial office (address below) with a brief cover letter including your name, address, and email. In order to receive a response, you must include a self-addressed envelope stamped with sufficient postage for our reply and for return of your manuscript (if requested). Do not send submissions by any delivery method that requires a signature.

Address mail submissions to: 

Bradford Morrow, Editor

Conjunctions

21 E 10th Street, #3E

New York, NY 10003

While we can’t predict exactly when an issue will close to new work, we typically read into August for our fall issues and into February for our spring issues.

Submissions will also be accepted electronically via Submittable twice a year, during our fall and winter reading periods. Please check back here or follow us on Facebook and Twitter or subscribe to our newsletter for the earliest information about our reading periods for each issue.

If you'd like to submit to Conjunctions outside of our fall and spring Submittable periods, please submit via postal mail.

WHAT TO SUBMIT

Conjunctions publishes short- and long-form fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid texts. We do not publish academic essays or book reviews.

All submissions must be in English and previously unpublished. We will consider works in translation for which the translator has secured the rights.

Although we have no official restrictions regarding word count, most of the manuscripts we select for publication are under eight thousand words long. For poetry submissions, we suggest sending half a dozen poems, depending on length.

We strongly suggest that writers new to Conjunctions read our recent issues to acquaint themselves with our publications. Subscriptions are available here.

Writers published in print issues of Conjunctions receive a small honorarium from our publisher, Bard College.

Call for Submissions: The Arkansas International

We welcome previously unpublished general submissions of fiction, poetry, essays, comics, and works in translation (through Submittable only) between November 15 and January 31. In the summer, we accept submissions for our themed issue between May 15 and August 15. While we are no longer open to free submissions, we are happy to offer waivers to those identifying as BIPOC or in need of financial assistance. For more information on how to apply, please email:

editor@arkint.org

To get a sense of what we publish, read previous issues on our website.

General Guidelines

• Prose submissions should be no more than 8,000 words, poem packets no more than five poems, and we ask that excerpts from longer works be self-contained. Please submit all work in one document.

• Simultaneous submissions are welcome, provided we are notified in the event that a piece is accepted elsewhere. Please do not submit more than a single story, essay, or poem packet until you have heard back from us about your previous submission.

• Submissions of translated works must include a copy of the original text. If there are extenuating circumstances that prevent you from including a copy of the original text at the time of your submission, please note that in the cover letter. Before submitting translations of works that are not in the public domain, translators should identify the rights holder and obtain a statement that the rights to publish an English translation are available.

• For all submissions, include a brief cover letter and bio.

• The Arkansas International cannot consider creative work from anyone currently or recently affiliated with the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, which includes those who have studied or worked there within the past four years.

• In the event that you need to withdraw any or all parts of your submission, withdraw via Submittable, or for partial withdrawals of poetry submissions, add a message to your submission.

Response time: On average, we respond within three to six to months, although sometimes longer due to the volume of submissions received. We continue to review submissions and will be in touch as soon as we can. We are unable to respond to general status queries. Should you need to be in touch with the editorial team, Submittable message is the best way to do so.

Contributors will be paid $25 a printed page (capped at $250) and receive two complementary copies of the journal.

Thank you for trusting us with your work. We look forward to reading it!

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: Motherwell

Motherwell is a Webby Award-winning online publication that tells all sides of the parenting story, with original content on family life, culture, obstacles and the process of overcoming them. Additionally, every day we curate the best, most interesting, and most thought-provoking parenting-related content across our social media platforms. We also offer editorial services and a curated platform, Motherwell Books, entirely devoted to showcasing the best parenting reads.

At Motherwell, we believe that modern parenting is a complicated entity and, as such, every single mom and dad out there has a unique voice that can contribute to our understanding of it. This means we feel strongly about showcasing a full spectrum of parenting experiences, but also that we do not shy away from conflicting perspectives.

The idea of a well conjures up images of community, of depth, of the essential nature of water. Motherwell is exactly this: a place for parents to gather, to think deeply and, hopefully, it is a community that you will keep coming back to, over and over again, for sustenance.

Current calls for submissions:

Parenting and Food. Our ongoing column, we are looking for stories that delve into all the ways in which these two areas of life can intersect. Interpretations might include: cultivating cooking skills with your kids; body image around pregnancy; raising picky or limited eaters; managing food allergies; coping with weight concerns, at either end of the spectrum. Completed essays only and please include word count (we tend to cap at 1,200).

Motherwell Books. We’re currently looking for posts related to reading and writing, themed book lists (e.g. for new moms, parenting teens, empowering girls), and articles and essays that are centered around a parenting book (or books) that aren’t your own. Please familiarize yourself with our site and the vertical before submitting and include word count (we tend to cap at 1,200).

Holidays as a Parent. We’d love to invite submissions about what the holidays (e.g. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving) mean to you and your family. Or anything regarding how they make you feel about being a parent. We are open to a range of formats and lengths: personal essays, humor pieces, listicles, anecdotes, etc. All formats welcome and please include a word count (we tend to cap at 1,200).

For all other submissions:

Motherwell is a publication that tells all sides of the parenting story. We accept work on a variety of parenting-related themes—culture, family life, obstacles and the process of overcoming them. We have two streams of writing on the site:

Paid opportunities for selected, original articles—either personal essays or perspective pieces.

An additional platform where we collect other pieces: syndicated and sponsored posts, shorter essays and alternative formats, including videos, graphic memoirs, lists, poetry, etc. These are unpaid.

We are unfortunately unable to give individual feedback on submissions, but we do offer personally tailored editorial services.

For time-sensitive articles, please continue to use Submittable but indicate ‘timely’ in the subject line. 

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: Redivider

Please submit your work through the Submittable page only. Redivider will not accept work through email or USPS. We welcome simultaneous submissions.

We are looking for new and under-published voices. Submit what you’re worried to send elsewhere. We want pieces that are nonobvious and circumvent the familiar, that breakthrough abstraction to examine a moment or concept from the side, rather than straight on. All submissions must be standalone pieces (no excerpts), although we accept single poems from a larger series of works.

Things we wish we saw more:

• Endings that stick with the reader

• Characters with complex motives

• Narratives with high stakes

• Consistent voice throughout the piece

• Pieces that reflect wider views and deal with current cultural and political discourses

• Revealing core truths in an unexpected way

• Making the familiar unfamiliar

Things we already see a lot of:
• Stories about illness
• Privileged family fiction
• Descriptions of the sun and its rays and the color of the sky on the opening page
• Poems about birds

Redivider will not consider submissions that endorse prejudice, racism, xenophobia, classism, sexism, ableism, fat-shaming, homophobia, or gratuitous violence. We reserve the right to reject such submissions outright and reject further submissions from the author. We also reserve the right to remove content from our journal if an author is known to be harassing or abusive. We do not accept plagiarized content in any form for publication in our journal. Any submitters known to submit plagiarized work will be blacklisted from all current and future publications at Redivider. Redivider does not accept work that has been even partially created with the use of AI.

Authors will receive a contract upon acceptance. Redivider requests first serial rights, and all rights revert back to the author upon publication. Authors retain copyright to their work published in Redivider. If the work is later republished, we request that you note its initial publication in Redivider. We also request the right, with author permission, to use your work for promotional purposes. We ask that authors who are accepted with us wait 2 years before submitting work again.

Poetry (10-12 per issue)

Length guidelines: 5 poems, 10 pages max
Please submit no more than five poems per submission, up to ten pages, as a single document. We can publish poetry featuring complex enjambment and indentation, but please be reasonable with longer poems, as each work must be carefully typeset, line-by-line, to show up as the artist intended on a web page.

Fiction (4 per issue)

Word count: 1,200–6,000 words
Please submit one short fiction piece at a time. Stories shorter than 1,200 words should be submitted under Flash Fiction. Texts should be double-spaced in 12pt Times New Roman or a similar serif typeface. Redivider will happily consider genre writing with strong enough prose, though hard science fiction, high fantasy, and tawdry romance will probably fit better at another journal.

Flash Fiction (2 per issue)

Word count: 1,200 words or less
Please submit no more than three flash fiction pieces per submission. These pieces will be evaluated by the Redivider Fiction Team and published in a dedicated section apart from other full-length short fiction. Texts should be double-spaced in 12pt Times New Roman or a similar serif typeface.

Memoir & Personal Essay (3 per issue)

Word count: 6,000 words or less
Please submit a single piece of nonfiction personal essay or memoir to this category. Texts should be double-spaced in 12pt Times New Roman or a similar serif typeface. Journalistic works, criticism and commentary, and texts containing substantial background research should be submitted under Cultural Critique.

Cultural Critique (2 per issue)

Word count: 8,000 words or less
Please submit a single piece of cultural commentary or critique. We accept both casual and academic-style manuscripts for this genre. These may be essays regarding US or non-US culture. Texts should be double-spaced in 12pt Times New Roman or a similar serif typeface.

Memoirs and personal essays should be submitted under that category.

Cover Art Image count: 6 images or less
The cover art will be used in both the online and print editions of the issue. Art submissions can be uploaded as six separate attachments in one submission or, preferably, in a single .ZIP file—please do not send multiple submissions. Please save original images for each piece as a separate .TIF file no larger than 6 x 9 inches and at a resolution of 600dpi for line art and 300 dpi for all others. If your piece is chosen for the cover, you may be contacted for a larger file. Digital submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will not be considered. Please email us with questions or for alternate submission methods.

Call for Submissions from Active Duty Military, Veterans, or Family Members: Issued: Stories of Service

Launched in May 2023 with sponsorship from the Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement at Arizona State University, ISSUED is a journal for veterans voices that upholds standards of craft, an intersection that readers have cherished for centuries. Military-inspired literature is American literature. It’s a space of reclamation and preservation, of both History as well as personal and familial history, and the poetry and prose in ISSUED is carrying on that tradition.

Because we pride ourselves on both our national readership and community ethos, ISSUED also features profiles of veterans who are doing extraordinary work in their communities, whether it be through the arts, education, mental health, or advocacy. In other words, we’re a journal with a broad military-affiliated audience, not just a strictly literary one.

Finally, at ISSUED, we believe in the healing power of narrative medicine, and according to studies, when veterans read or write about service, they have better health outcomes. Thus, we hope that ISSUED will serve as a resource for veterans’ writing circles, discussion groups, treks, etc., i.e. be used to facilitate a heathier veteran community.

SUBMISSIONS

ISSUED is looking for work by active-duty, veterans, and family members—specifically, poetry and flash prose that expresses the spectrum of experiences within military life, including gender and sexuality, BIPOC voices, physical and mental health, combat, enlisting and separating, family and relationships, and reintegration into society. We also accept visual art in any genre.

Submit up to 3 poems or 1 piece of flash prose (1500 words or fewer). Send your submission in a single word doc to:

issuedjournal@gmail.com 

The submission deadline for the 2025 issue is December 31, 2024.

Please include a bio (100 words or less) that includes your military affiliation.

FAQs

All rights revert back to the author upon publication.

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please let us know if your work has been accepted elsewhere.

Feel free to send up to 5 pieces of visual art, but please do not send more than 3 poems or 1 piece of flash-length prose (fiction or nonfiction, 1500 words or fewer).

Call for Submissions on Theme of "Metamodernism": Jokes Review

Submissions are OPEN!

THEME: Metamodernism. Send us stories and poems that oscillate between postmodern irony and modern sincerity. To learn more about what we’re after, read Eleven Metamodern Methods in the Arts by Greg Dember. If you’re not sure if your piece is metamodern, go ahead and submit and let us decide!

DEADLINE: February 1, 2025

Submit to:

jokesliterary@gmail.com (more details below)

We also always accept nonfiction submissions for Jokes Journal (our Substack newsletter) as well as to our book series. See below for details.

General Submission Info

To get a better idea of what we're looking for, check out our ABOUT page. All submissions to Jokes Review must be original and previously unpublished.

SUBMIT to jokes review

Send submissions to:

 

jokesliterary@gmail.com (in the body of an email or as an attachment).

 

Your submission should include contact info and a short third-person bio.

 

Simultaneous submission are welcome, but let us know if the work is picked up elsewhere.
submit to our blog, jokes journal

Follow the instructions above for submitting to Jokes Review.

 

We’d love to see submissions of art collections, book reviews, or any sort of literary curiosity. Basically, send us anything, really. We’ll check it out.

 

submit to our book series

Follow the instructions above for submitting to Jokes Review, and then refer to the specifications below for our two series:

Fair-Minded Fraud and Forgery: The work should be at least 12,000 words. The content should explore a specific theme in art, literature, or philosophy that you are personally connected to or unusually inspired by. The work should be a mixture of fact, fiction, and autobiography. 

 

Egregious Pulp: The work should be at least 12,000 words. We’re looking for pulpy genre fiction that’s fun, edgy, and genre-bending. But still literary and intelligent.
 

RIGHTS

By submitting your work to Jokes Review, you indicate your consent for us to publish your work in our journal. Jokes Review acquires first North American serial rights. After publication, all rights revert to the author.

 

SUPPORT

Submitting to Jokes Review is always free, as we believe it should be. But if you'd like to show your support for our journal, consider purchasing a copy of one of our issues (they look great in print!). Also, tell your friends about Jokes Review, share our stories, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Call for Submissions on Theme of "Love and the Holidays": Discretionary Love

Are you considering sending us your love piece? Here’s what you need to know.

All pieces must be connected to love. We are currently accepting: poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, essays and articles. Send us the beauty and the chaos.

SPECIAL HOLIDAY EDITION FOR NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER SUBMISSIONS!!

We want to hear about your thanksgiving meltdowns, home for the holidays tear jerkers & new year break ups.

**Regular sub rules still apply, but your love story must incorporate the holiday season.**

Submissions are OPEN. We aim to publish new love stories monthly. Our next story release will be on December 22, 2024.

Submissions Open: November 1, 2024 – December 15, 2024.

• We prefer new times roman, double spacing and 12 pt font. 
• Poetry: 1-5 poems, no more than 100 lines per poem.
• Short Stories/Creative Nonfiction: 1 piece up to 3000 words.
• Articles/Essays: up to 3000 words. 1 article or essay. Please include a brief synopsis of what the piece is about in your email.

Note: All accepted submissions will be promoted on Discretionary Love’s social media platforms.
Sound good? Alright, you’re almost ready to send!

Send submissions with a third-person bio to:

submissions@discretionarylove.com 

We accept .pdf and .doc(x). Social media handles are encouraged.

PLEASE NOTE:

*Any submissions received outside of the submission period, will not be considered.

*We do allow simultaneous submissions.

*Original work only. 

Discretionary Love reserves all rights to the author. Please credit us if work is republished after appearing here at Discretionary Love.

Call for Submissions: Menagerie

 

Menagerie publishes fictions, essays, and poems. We believe in sentences so sharp they draw blood, the strange and inexplicable, the wild and weird and uncanny, words in thickets, clusters, and flocks, pieces that move us beyond caring what others think about said pieces.

Things we like: fictions ala Borges, Link, Calvino, & Sparks; weird lyric essay; engagements with the environment and natural world; poems that explode form; bricolage, masala, & sagul sagul; forays into the omnipresent information-saturated online architecture we live in.

Things we don’t: lukewarm prose, sentences bereft of emotion, formulaic attempts at being on trend, conformity, pat endings, sentiment-drenched rhyming poems, neat and orderly stories.

We care about writers and artists. That means if you’ve entrusted your work to us, you’ll get a response. And we pay for the work we publish. Because it’s important that we value what you’ve made.

Menagerie is open for two reading periods a year: Feb-May and Aug-Nov. Subs are free till we hit our monthly cap, so get in early. (Note: Submittable now shows a deadline of Dec. 31, 2024 with $3.00 submission fee.) Tip Jar subs are also available during reading periods. (If only tip jar subs are available on the submittable page, that means we’ve hit our monthly free cap. If you want to submit for free, just wait till the start of the next month.)

We’ll do our level best to promote your work, pairing each piece with original artwork, and providing social posts you can use on your own channels. It’s our hope that Menagerie will serve as an accelerator for bringing your work into the world and getting it noticed.

We observe the following guidelines:

• Simultaneous submissions are allowed. If your work is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw it.

• Please submit to only one category at a time. A focused submission is better than hitting all categories at once.

• Poetry submissions may include 3-5 poems at once. If one of the poems is accepted elsewhere, notify us, and we’ll continue considering the other poems in your submission.

• Stories and essays should be no more than 5K. We tend to publish in the 1-3K category more frequently, through, given the short attention span we all have on the web.

• We pay $50 per acceptance (e.g. one piece of prose or one to three poems) and acquire first serial rights. We do not republish work that has already appeared elsewhere.

• Please expect a response time of 30-60 days.

In short: if you’ve written something and don’t know what to call it, we want to see it. Our menagerie is vast and unending, and contains all size and shape of curios.

Perhaps yours will soon be one of them.

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: Broken Antler

Broken Antler is a literary magazine and publisher of work that is dark, speculative, experimental, unsettling, and absurd.

The Marrow, Broken Antler’s blog and home of our LGBTQIA+ creator series, is currently accepting pitches for interviews, reviews, and essays, as well as creative submissions of micro fiction, poetry, and art.

BAM Quarterly, Broken Antler’s online journal, publishes creative work four times a year (during the months of October, January, April, and July). 

Broken Antler Magazine is our annual print publication, featuring creative and critical work from emerging and established writers, artists, creators, and individuals working within the horror space.

Broken Antler publishes horror and weird fiction, as well as sci-fi and dark fantasy. The editors are partial to a wide range of subgenres—body, cosmic, folk, gore, etc. (and our EIC likes any writing that screws with her sleep schedule). If your work fits into the horror genre, or is some version of fucked-up, send it our way.

For poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid submissions, we’re looking for work that is haunting and monstrous, strange and bizarre. Extra points if your work is experimental or doing something unusual with form.

Do NOT send us work featuring gratuitous sexual assault, violence against women and/or marginalized groups, or hate speech. Broken Antler is 100% run by women, several members of our editorial staff identify as LGBTQIA+, and we are committed to uplifting these and other previously silenced voices.

NOTE: Submitted work should be previously unpublished, and we do NOT accept AI-generated content. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere. Upon acceptance, Broken Antler requests first serial rights for physical and electronic publication. Following publication, all rights revert back to the author; though we do ask that you credit Broken Antler as the place your work first appeared.

mail all submissions to:

brokenantlermagazine[AT]gmail[DOT]com (Change [AT] to @ and [DOT] to .)

In the subject line of your email — please indicate which category you’re submitting to and whether you’re submitting to BAM Quarterly or The Marrow (all submissions are considered for our annual print issue). EXAMPLE: “Fiction submission for BAM Quarterly”

In the body of your email — please include the title of your piece(s), word count (prose only), a brief bio (100 words max.), content warnings if necessary, and any other information you’d like to share with us about you + your work. 

Broken Antler is committed to paying writers and artists for their work. Individuals with work selected for Broken Antler’s print issue receive $20 + a contributor copy of the magazine. We pay a token of $10 (per piece) for work published in our online venues. Payment is provided upon acceptance.

More information here.

Writing Competition: J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards

Two J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards, in the amount of $25,000, are given annually to aid in the completion of a significant work of nonfiction on a topic of American political or social concern.

Recognizing that a nonfiction book based on extensive original research often overtaxes the resources available to its author, the project envisions the award as a way of closing the gap between the time and money an author has and the time and money that finishing a book requires.

Applicants for the award must already have a contract with a U.S.-based publisher to write a nonfiction book. The judges will make their decision on the basis of achieving maximum impact on a promising book project. Therefore, their selection criteria will represent a blend of the merit of the book and the financial need of the author. For this reason, the judges will need to know the amount of the author’s advance, as well as any other financial support for the book, such as a grant.

Materials required for entry:

• Completed entry form
• A copy of the original book proposal
• 50-75 pages from the work-in-progress
• Photocopy of a contract with a publisher
• An explanation of how the award will advance the progress of the book

No entry fee is required for this prize.

Deadline: Dec. 5, 2024

Submit your entry here.

Writing Competition: Danahy Fiction Prize

Guidelines for submission to the Danahy Fiction Prize

$1,000 Award • Publication in Tampa Review

Judging is by the editors of Tampa Review, and all entries will be considered for publication.

1. All entrants receive a one-year subscription to Tampa Review.

2. Submissions must be original, previously unpublished short fiction. We generally prefer manuscripts between 500 and 5,000 words, but stories falling slightly outside this range will also be considered. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but Tampa Review must be notified immediately if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere. Submissions are not accepted from current faculty or students at the University of Tampa. Editors will recuse themselves from judging entries from close friends and associates to avoid conflicts of interest.

3. Manuscripts should be double-spaced and include a cover page with author’s name, mailing address, and other contact information, plus a total word count.

4. A nonrefundable handling fee of $20 is required for each manuscript submitted. Submissions are not complete until this fee has been sent using any major credit card via our secure online service. (There is an additional small electronic payment processing fee.)

5. Submissions open September 1 and must be electronically dated online by the deadline of December 31 annually.

The winner will be announced as soon as possible.

Submit your work here.

Writing Competition: Colorado Prize for Poetry

The Colorado Prize for Poetry is an international poetry book manuscript contest established in 1995. Each year’s prizewinner receives a $2,500 honorarium and publication of his or her book by the Center for Literary Publishing.

Enter by Mail:
Manuscripts will be accepted between October 1, 2024, and the postmark deadline of January 14, 2025 (note that we observe a five-day grace period for both paper and online submissions).

The winner will be announced by May 2025.

The winning book-length collection of poems will be published by the Center for Literary Publishing and distributed by the University Press of Colorado in the fall of 2025. The author receives a $2,500 honorarium.

There is a $25 entry fee, which includes a one-year subscription to Colorado Review. Make checks payable to Colorado Review. We have a limited number of fee waivers for writers experiencing financial hardship this year. Please email us at creview@colostate.edu to request a waiver. If you were granted a fee waiver in the last two years, please do not request one this year; our policy is to grant them only every three years.

Poets with US addresses may opt for either a print or digital subscription; please indicate which you’d prefer, otherwise we’ll send a print version. Poets living outside the US will receive digital subscriptions (as long as a valid e-mail address is provided).

The final judge is Craig Morgan Teicher.

Friends and students (current & former) of the final judge are not eligible to compete, nor are Colorado State University employees, students, and alumni.

Entrants must be at least 18 years old.

Manuscripts should be at least 48 pages but no more than 100 pages.

Manuscripts may consist of poems that have been published, but the manuscript as a whole must be unpublished.

Please do not include acknowledgments/publication credits; the judges do not see these.

Include two title pages: top page with manuscript title and your name, address, e-mail address, and phone number; second page with manuscript title only. Your name should NOT appear anywhere else in the manuscript.

Manuscripts may be double- or single-spaced. You may print front and back if you wish.

Manuscripts will NOT be returned. Please do not enclose extra postage for the return of your manuscript.

You may enter more than one manuscript. Each manuscript requires the $25 entry fee. You may send multiple manuscripts in one package with one combined check, or you may send each entry separately—whichever method is more convenient for you. If you’d like the additional subscriptions sent to someone other than yourself, include that information. Otherwise, your subscription will be extended by one year for each additional entry.

The theme and style are both open.

Translations are not eligible for the Colorado Prize for Poetry.

Authors do NOT need to be residents of Colorado or the United States. If you are, however, a foreign national working in the United States, please check the conditions of your visa status with regard to receiving payment from entities other than your sponsor. Colorado State University cannot issue honoraria to foreign nationals with B1/WB, B2/WT, H-1B, or F-1 visas. A J-1 visa holder with a sponsor other than CSU must have written authorization from the Responsible Officer (RO) at their sponsoring institution prior to the activity.

Writers should enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope for contest results and a self-addressed stamped postcard for notification of the manuscript’s safe arrival.

Send your entry to:

Colorado Prize for Poetry
Center for Literary Publishing
9105 Campus Delivery
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-9105

Questions? Please call us at (970) 491-5449 or send an e-mail to:

creview@colostate.edu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Submit your entry online:

Manuscripts will be accepted between October 1, 2024, and the postmark deadline of January 14, 2025 (note that we observe a five-day grace period for both paper and online submissions).

The winner will be announced by May 2025.

The winning book-length collection of poems will be published by the Center for Literary Publishing and distributed by the University Press of Colorado in the fall of 2025. The author receives a $2,500 honorarium.

There is a $28 online entry fee, which includes a one-year subscription to Colorado Review (the extra $3 goes to Submittable).

We have a limited number of fee waivers for writers experiencing financial hardship this year. Please email us at creview@colostate.edu to request a waiver. If you were granted a fee waiver in the last two years, please do not request one this year; our policy is to grant them only every three years.

Poets with US addresses may opt for either a print or digital subscription. Poets living outside the US will receive digital subscriptions (as long as a valid e-mail address is provided). Please select the appropriate submission portal.

The final judge is Craig Morgan Teicher.

Friends and students (current & former) of the final judge are not eligible to compete, nor are Colorado State University employees, students, and alumni.

Entrants must be at least 18 years old.

Manuscripts must be at least 48 pages but no more than 100 pages.

Manuscripts may consist of poems that have been published, but the manuscript as a whole must be unpublished (this includes self-publishing).

In your cover letter, please tell us the manuscript title, your name, address, e-mail address, and phone number. You may supply a bio note here, if you wish, but it is not required. Your name should NOT appear anywhere else in the manuscript or in the name of the file name.

Please do not include acknowledgments/publication credits of individual poems.

Manuscripts may be double- or single-spaced.

You may enter more than one manuscript. Each manuscript requires the $28 entry fee. If you’d like the additional subscriptions sent to someone other than yourself , include that information in your cover letter. Otherwise, your subscription will be extended by one year for each additional entry.

The theme and style are both open.

Translations are not eligible for the Colorado Prize for Poetry.

Authors do NOT need to be residents of Colorado or the United States. If you are, however, a foreign national working in the United States, please check the conditions of your visa status with regard to receiving payment from entities other than your sponsor. Colorado State University cannot issue honoraria to foreign nationals with B1/WB, B2/WT, H-1B, or F-1 visas. A J-1 visa holder with a sponsor other than CSU must have written authorization from the Responsible Officer (RO) at their sponsoring institution prior to the activity.

Poets who submit online will receive contest results via e-mail by May 2025.

On or after October 1, 2024, please:  

Submit to Colorado Prize for Poetry

Questions? Please call us at (970) 491-5449 or send an e-mail to:

creview@colostate.edu

Call for Submissions on Theme of "Secrets and Mysteries": Superpresent

Superpresent is a quarterly magazine of the arts. Superpresent is available free online and a limited run of print copies for each issue. Superpresent publishes poems, short stories, essays, visual art pieces, experimental art, video art, and sound art.

We accept submissions from anywhere in the world.

No fees for submission.

The theme for the Winter 2025 issue is Secrets and Mysteries

We are are seeking poetry, short stories, essays, experimental art, video, sound art, all forms of visual art as well as asemic writing and textual arts of all kinds.

Submissions Due December 1st

Visual Art Guidelines: 

• We will accept art in JPEG format.

• Artwork must be 300 dpi or higher.

• All artwork must be at least 8.5’’ x 11’’ to fit in the magazine.

• Up to three images may be submitted

• Please include titles for images

Written Guidelines :

• We accept submissions in DOC, DOCX, and RTF formats.

• For poetry, up to three poems, one per page

• Essays and short stories should be 500-2000 words.

Video and Sound Guidelines:

• Send a link to the video or sound file posting (Youtube, etc)

• Provide a short description of the piece (up to 100 words)

• For videos provide up to three still images

Include a 50-100 word bio written in the third person with your submission.

Please send your submissions to:

editor@superpresent.org 

Copyright and publication specifications: First Serial Rights

Call for Submissions: Just Keep Up Magazine

Just Keep Up Magazine

Submissions should be sent to:

JustKeepUpMagazine@gmail.com

Submissions will be responded to within two to three months, if not sooner.

There are no reading fees.

Accepted pieces will be compensated as follows:

$10 a story

$10 a poem

Payment will be made upon publication and processed through PayPal, CashApp, or Venmo, whichever is preferred. Please include which method of payment you prefer in your submission. If you live in a country that does not accept these as forms of payment, we will attempt to mail you cash or a check.

Submissions are open to humans and other life forms of any nationality or planet of residence.

Stories should be science fiction and/or horror (preferably both) and 100-10,000 words long. Please send one story at a time. Please include the genre of your story in your submission.

Poems can be any length but the pieces you submit have to incorporate some element of science fiction and/or horror. Interpret this as you will. Send up to ten poems at a time.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed and encouraged. Poetry and fiction can be submitted simultaneously.

Please attach your writing to your email as a docx or PDF file. If this is not possible for you, include the text in the body of your email.

If you used AI in any way for your submission, please let us know in your submission.

We are possibly open to non-fiction pieces such as reviews of science fiction/horror pieces of art (movies, books, et cetera). Please query us before submitting anything non-fiction.

Call for Poetry Submissions on Themes of Art, Collecting, or Antiques: The Magazine Antiques

THE MAGAZINE ANTIQUES, America’s premier publication on antiques and visual arts, is accepting poetry submissions for a creative new feature which pairs a poem with a crossword puzzle on the same theme. The poem must consider antiques, art, or collecting and, ideally, reflect subject knowledge.

No submission fee.

$50 paid for accepted poems. Send 1-3 unpublished poems, 30-50 lines each. It may take six months to hear back. Notify us if a submission is accepted elsewhere.

Send submissions in a single document with your name as the title to:

evegrubinantiques@gmail.com 

with a brief cover letter. Use this address for questions.

Call for Submissions: The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts

The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts is looking for, as you might guess, "compressed creative arts." We accept fiction and creative nonfiction, as long if they are compressed in some way. Work is published weekly, without labels, and the labels here only exist to help us determine its best readers.

Our response time is generally 1-5 days. Also, our acceptance rate is currently about 2% of submissions. We pay writers $50 per accepted piece and signed contract.

The reading period is March 15 to June 15 & September 15 to December 15. If you've been previously published by the press, please wait a year until submitting again. Thanks.

The reader for your submission is, during this round of submissions, the managing editor.

Please be sure to submit in the correct category; we've been receiving several fiction submissions in the creative nonfiction category.

We do not publish poetry that has line breaks, but we are thrilled to consider prose poetry without line breaks.

For all submitters, we aren't as concerned with labels—hint fiction, prose poetry, micro fiction, flash fiction, and so on—as we are with what compression means to you. In other words, what form "compression" takes in each artist's work will be up to each individual. However, we don't publish erotica or work with strong, graphic sexual content.

In short, we want to fall in love with your work. That might happen in the way we've fallen in love with work we've previously published, or it might happen in a way we have yet to experience. Maybe reading that other work will help in knowing whether you should send your work to us, but in truth, such a thing might not be discoverable.

Here are things that matter:

• Please do not include a cover letter as part of the manuscript document.

• Please include, as part of your cover letter on Submittable, a brief bio. Also, in the cover letter, let us know why you feel this piece works for a journal obsessed with "compression."

• Please no more than one submission of a single piece in each genre at a time. Please feel free to submit again after receiving a response, but please no more than 3 submissions per genre per reading period.

• Please do not submit work that has been previously published anywhere: blogs, personal websites, print and online journals, and so on. Simultaneous submissions are fine with us, but please let us know if the submission has been accepted elsewhere. Failure to do will result in some facsimile of your face being put on the Matter dart board. And no one wants that.

• Please format prose to be singled-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, in a Microsoft Word document, with an extra space between each paragraph. We do not consider poetry with line breaks.

• If you've been previously published by The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, please wait a year before submitting again.

• Word count: Maximum 600 words 

Submit your work here.

Call for Nonfiction Submissions: Cutleaf Journal

Cutleaf welcomes writers at all levels of experience to submit original literary nonfiction in English for consideration.

Whatever the topic, we are looking for well-written, imaginative work that invites a reader to join the writer in thinking through what it means to be alive in the modern world.

Cutleaf is a journal run by writers. We try to treat writers as we want to be treated: We charge no fee to submit.

We pay from $100 to $300 per published nonfiction piece.

We reply to submissions in a timely manner, usually not later than three months and generally much sooner.

For the 2025 journal year, we will be open for nonfiction submissions for three months (Sept 1 to Nov 30, 2024.)

• We get many hundreds of submissions in nonfiction each year. So we ask those who submit to adhere to our guidelines. Those who do not follow the guidelines may be moved to the end of the reading queue. Only one nonfiction submission per writer per calendar year.

• Name and email on the first page of the submission. Text double-spaced, with page numbers, and in a standard 12 point font with a 1 inch margin. A brief bio written in the third person included with submission.

• We take a narrative, literary, and imaginative approach to nonfiction. We welcome traditional essay formats but we also welcome variations such as speculative essays, essays in verse, "hermit crab" essays, or essays that explore the use of language in imaginative ways.

• We are open to any topic that moves a writer, but particularly invite work that addresses the ethics and practice of distinctive occupations. The nonfiction editor, a physician, takes special interest in reading work from physicians, dentists, nurses, social workers, scientists, technicians, and other clinicians and caregivers involved in health care and public health.

• We do not limit our point of view to the simply factual, but we expect nonfiction writers to hew closely to the truth. We do not fact-check the pieces published in the journal, but we do engage in a back-and-forth editing process for many of the pieces we accept for publication. Authors are responsible for securing permissions for quotes of copyrighted material, if needed.

• We are not interested in and will not publish fantasy, erotica, romance (paranormal or otherwise), polemics, position statements, editorials, purely academic papers, or screeds. We are not interested in pitches for work yet to be completed. We do not publish previously published work.

• We consider simultaneous submissions with the understanding that you will quickly inform us if a piece is accepted by another publication.

Submit your work here.

Nonfiction Fellowship: The Ann Friedman Weekly Fellowship

The Ann Friedman Weekly Fellowship is an annual program for nonfiction writers who are not yet established in their careers. It includes mentorship and editing; a $5,000 stipend; regular check-ins to provide structure and accountability; and space in my newsletter where fellows can publish and promote their work. This program is funded by paying members of the Ann Friedman Weekly.

For the 2025 fellowship, I will provide support and accountability to two writers, who will each write and publish a newsletter of their own. Each fellow will come up with an editorial focus (or hone an existing one), create a workflow, and integrate feedback as they build a body of self-published work. I will, of course, welcome conversation about other writing projects and offer broader advice throughout the year. But the newsletter will be their main fellowship focus.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Who I’m looking for: Nonfiction writers who don’t have (m)any published clips, who aren’t well-connected to editors, who don’t have a substantial social media following. I’m looking for people who are already writing and developing their skills. I invite people from populations that are underrepresented in media to apply. (I know most job listings have a line like this, but I really and truly mean it. Please apply!) For reasons related to scheduling calls and time zones, I am limiting this to writers who live in the United States.

Compensation: A stipend of $5,000. This fellowship is not a full-time job and will not provide any health insurance benefits. Think of it more like a year-long, highly personalized workshop with steady mentorship. 

Commitment: We’ll do a monthly Zoom check-in, and you will have space in my newsletter at least once a month, too. Your time commitment will be variable, but I think it’s safe to say a few hours per week. I expect you to engage with your fellow fellow (lol) and with me, and to meet the deadlines we set together.

Why I’m doing this: I’m eager to share what I know about the craft and profession of writing, and I love having colleagues. For more context, read this. 

How to apply: Write me a letter, no longer than one page. In it,

Tell me a little bit about who you are and the writing you’re currently doing.

Then tell me about the newsletter you’d like to publish in 2025. It could be a limited series, or an ongoing project you hope to keep up after the fellowship ends. It could be just the germ of an idea, or something you’ve been working on for awhile that needs a refresh. Be as specific as you can.

Tell me about the nonfiction writing skills you’re most eager to develop in the coming year. (Examples: Conducting great interviews, writing compelling titles/headlines, making the personal resonate more universally.) Put another way: How do you hope to improve over the course of the fellowship year?

If you have a little space left, briefly tell me about the last thing you read and loved. What was so good about it?

Title the document “[Your Name] AF WKLY 2025”

Fill out this form and upload the letter. I will only consider applications submitted through the form.

Timeline: Applications are due by 11:59pm PST on January 3, 2025. This deadline is strict. I will be in touch with all applicants by February 15. Fellowships begin March 3, 2025 and run through the end of the calendar year.

Writing Competition: The Gregory Djanikian and Veasna So Scholarships

The Gregory Djanikian & Anthony Veasna So Scholarships

Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry

Gregory Djanikian was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and came to the United States when he was eight years old. He has published seven poetry collections, the latest of which is Sojourners of the In-Between (CMU Press). His work appears in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Boulevard, Poetry, Southern Review, and TriQuarterly, among others. Until retiring, he was the longstanding Director of Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania, where he greatly enriched both the Adroit Journal as well as its staff of emerging writers.

We recognize and encourage the gift of such support by offering it ourselves; in honor of Greg’s contribution to emerging student and non-student writers at Penn and around the world, we recognize six emerging poets as Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry each year.

All emerging writers who have not published full-length collections are eligible (regardless of age, geographic location, or educational status), and are encouraged to submit. Writers with forthcoming debut full-length collections are eligible so long as collections won’t appear earlier than April 2024.

Gregory Djanikian Scholars receive $200 and publication of their portfolios of poems in a future issue of the Adroit Journal. Finalists will be awarded copies of Greg’s latest collection, Sojourners of the In-Between, and a list of semifinalists determined by the editors will be released with results.

Anthony Veasna So Scholars in Fiction

Anthony Veasna So (1992-2020) was an American writer of short stories that often drew from his upbringing as a child of Cambodian immigrants and were described by the New York Times as “crackling, kinetic and darkly comedic.” His debut short story collection, Afterparties, was published posthumously by HarperCollins in 2021 and was named a New York Times Bestseller and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book.

Anthony was not just one of the most talented new writers to grace this decade—he was also a member of the Adroit family, having served as a prose editor for four years. Anthony was as an inspiration to all of us, and to so many writers around the world. In honor of Anthony’s contribution to both the Adroit Journal‘s staff community and the world’s fiction readers, we will recognize six emerging fiction writers each year as Anthony Veasna So Scholars in Fiction.

All emerging writers who have not published full-length collections or novels are eligible (regardless of age, geographic location, or educational status), and are encouraged to submit. Writers with forthcoming debut full-length collections are eligible so long as collections won’t appear earlier than April 2024.

Anthony Veasna So Scholars receive $200 and publication of one piece from their portfolio in a future issue of the Adroit Journal. Finalists will be awarded copies of Anthony’s collection, Afterparties, and a list of semifinalists determined by the editors will be released with results. 

Djankian Scholars:
Submissions may include up to six poems (max of ten single-spaced pages). Simultaneous submissions, previously published submissions, and submissions recognized by outside organizations are accepted, provided that a) a full catalogue of publication history for enclosed poems is included in the submission and b) at least one poem in the submission remains unpublished.

Submitters should reach out promptly via email (editors@theadroitjournal.org) if work disclosed as unpublished is accepted elsewhere.

Veasna So Scholars:
Submissions may include up to three stories (max of 9,000 words total). Simultaneous submissions, previously published submissions, and submissions recognized by outside organizations are accepted, provided that a) a full catalogue of publication history for enclosed work is included in the submission and b) at least one piece in the submission remains unpublished.

Submitters should promptly add a note to their entry on Submittable if work disclosed as unpublished is accepted elsewhere.

A note on fees:
To accommodate this while offering free online issues, we have set a non-refundable submission fee of $15. If you require financial assistance, you may submit a fee waiver with this form (Djanikian) and this form (Veasna So). Due to fee waivers' processing time, fee waivers will only be accepted until December 10th, 2024 at 11:59 pm EST.

Deadline for both applications is Dec. 31, 2024.

Submit here.

Writing Competition: Best Microfiction 2024

We are pleased to say that Best Microfiction 2025 will be published by Pelekinesis in the summer of 2025. The Best Microfiction anthology series considers stories of only 400 words or fewer. Co-edited by award-winning microfiction writer/editor Meg Pokrass, and Flannery O’Connor Prize-winning author Gary Fincke, the anthology will have Dawn Raffel serve as final judge.

We are accepting submissions from lit mag editors on a rolling basis from November 2nd, 2024 and continuing through to a deadline of December 15th, 2024. Please feel free to nominate stories that have yet to be published in December, as they are stories published in 2024.

Each nomination should be a separate submission. At the top of each submission, please write your own name, the name of your magazine, and the author’s name and e-mail address.

Instructions for Literary Magazine editors:

You are welcome to nominate up to five microfiction stories that were published by your publication in 2024. Please do not include work that has already appeared in an anthology or 'best-of' list, or that has won a prize from another competition. If your nomination wins an award after our selections have been made, that’s fine. But if the work has already won an award, please do not submit it here.

So, to summarize...
Requirements:

• 400 words or less

• Limit of five nominations published in 2024

• Deadline December 15th, 2024 At the top of each submission, write:

your name
the name of your magazine
author’s name and e-mail address 

Not accepted:

• work previously published in anthologies

• work published in ’best of’ lists

• prize-winning stories from other competitions

Submit here.

Call for Submissions to Anthology onTheme of Rebirth, Renewal, and Reemergence: Breaking Through the Penumbra (Cicada Song Press)

Cicada Song Press is now open for submissions for our Spring 2025 Anthology: Breaking Through the Penumbra. Submissions are open September 1, 2024 – November 30, 2024.

We are soliciting flash fiction and short stories from 100 – 5,000 words, based on the theme: Rebirth, Renewal and Reemergence. We encourage stories from all fiction genres and creative non-fiction.

Keeping with our mission statement, we encourage both unpublished and published writers from diverse backgrounds.

There is no entry fee for submissions, and we do accept multiple submissions, up to 3 per author. Your story may not have been previously curated in a magazine, journal, anthology, etc. (but if you published it yourself on a webpage that is ok), and we do not accept AI generated stories. All story decisions will be made by the end of December, 2024.

Selected stories will be printed in our Breaking Through the Penumbra anthology, expected in Spring 2025. Authors of selected stories will receive a free e-copy of the book, along with the opportunity to purchase print copies at the publisher’s cost. We will also include one social media/website link printed alongside your story so your fans can find you. Story rights revert to the author immediately following publication.

Be especially careful to include an accurate email address, as this will be our sole means of contacting you.

We are not particularly choosy about manuscript format, but a double spaced, 12-point, legible font is nice. If you’d like more guidance, we suggest William Shunn’s guide to Proper Manuscript Format. We request .doc, docx, or .rtf format. If you have more questions, please contact us at:

submissions@cicadasongpress.com

Do NOT use this email for your submission, only for questions.

Submission form here.

Writing Competition: T Paulo Urcanse Prize for Literary Excellence

T Paulo Urcanse was a Portuguese writer and activist, most famous for his short novel The Pucker Fish, which won him the acclaim of egghead academic types and ruff and tumble dropout members of the urban intelligentsia secretly living off the generational wealth of their parents but dressed in the uniform of a late 19th Century cobbler and/or coal miner.

In a 1997 interview with the popular American television host, Montel Williams, T Paulo Urcanse said (via translator), “The point of writing is not free expression, or thought analysis through careful cataloging of tangential subject matter, but rather that one day, and God may it be soon, you write a bestseller and make lots and lots of money.”

Over the course of his lifetime, T Paulo submitted his short fiction and poems to over 187 contests, with submission fees totaling in the quadruple digits, US$. Unfortunately, he never won. Not once.

Last year, The Editors of High Horse began the process of rectifying the great financial injustices rendered upon T Paulo by global markets and sports fans and viewers of The Bachelorette everywhere, by announcing the First Annual T Paulo Urcanse Prize For Literary Excellence, giving away $500 in prize money to five very talented writers. In the process, we were fortunate enough to read through over 300 submissions from people no doubt as incredulous as we are about the lack of public acknowledgement by the academy for the utter genius that was T Paulo Urcanse’s writing.

In the spirit of continuity and finishing what you started, by Jove, it is with great ceremony and pleasure that we formally announce the Second Annual T Paulo Urcanse Prize For Literary Excellence.

The Second Annual T Paulo Urcanse Prize for Literary Excellence is open to poets, writers, and essayists of all colors and stripes. Whether you be a lonely writer looking for community and wanting to make your literary debut, or a similarly eggheaded and celebrated writer in the vein of the namesake of this prize, we welcome your submissions with open arms, without fees or prerequisites, without ever having known you or met you at a cocktail party where we discussed the terror of contemporary history and post-structuralist theory or the pitfalls of the first person perspective in a short story or weird childhood stories that involve stray cats and the throwing of tennis balls at moving vehicles from behind bushes at night in the summer on the Main Street of the provincial town where we were raised.

AND NOW FOR AN ELUCIDATION OF THE MONETARY PRIZES

1st Place: $250, publication on the website, and an optional interview with the Editors.

2nd Place: $100, publication on the website.

3rd-5th Place: $50, publication on the website.

Submissions are open from now (October 31st, 2024 AD) until November 30th, 2024 AD.

You may email your contest submission as a PDF, Word Doc, or Google Doc to:

therealhighhorse@gmail.com,

again, without a fee. Please put (Contest Submission) in the subject line of your message.

Winners will be announced two weeks after the submission deadline on this very website, and our corresponding Twitter (sorry, X), and Instagram pages.

All blessings,

The Editors

Call for Submissions: Split Lip Magazine

 

 

You know the drill. Read our issues to see if we’re a good home for your work. Get the full scoop before you submit! Then hit up our Submittable. All submissions are currently being considered for our monthly online issues. In an effort to promote Black voices, Split Lip Magazine is opening free submissions for Black writers in all genres.

 

Payment

We pay (via PayPal) $75 per author for poems, memoirs, flash, fiction, and art, $50 for interviews/reviews, and $25 for mini-reviews for our web issues. 

As long as we’ve got money, we’re committed to paying people for their work.

Free Submissions

January, March, May, August, September, November

We recommend submitting early in free subs months! Sometimes we have to shut free subs early due to a rad but also overwhelming response. (A peek behind the curtain: our free sub cap with Submittable maxes out.)

Tip Jar Submissions

February, April, June, October, and the first half of December

We don’t accept submissions in July or from December 15–31.

If the fees are a burden, please reach out to us! We can’t always help out, but we like to try when we can.

Ground Rules

What’s a magazine without exclusive content? We want to see fresh work that hasn’t been published anywhere before (including your personal blog or website). First-time electronic publication rights are really all we ask for.

 

One submission per writer at a time, please. That means if you submit a poem, you can’t also submit flash, etc. You get the picture.

 

We accept simultaneous submissions. Yay! But please withdraw your piece immediately if it’s accepted elsewhere.

 

Content warnings: If your work deals with sensitive or triggering topics, please identify/note them in your cover letter.

 

If you used AI to write/create your piece, you must disclose this fact in your cover letter.

 

We don’t accept emailed submissions. You gotta use our Submittable. The exception to the rule is Interviews/Reviews—scroll down for more info.

 

If you have some edits to make after you’ve submitted: withdraw your submission, update it, and re-submit! We know it’s a headache, but we’re a small, all-volunteer team. We only have so many heads to hold everyone else’s aches. So be a pal and do a little of the legwork for us! Any emails asking us to correct something in a submission will, as much as it pains us to say it, be ignored!

 

It’ll take us up to 20 weeks to let you know if you’re in or not—we’re a small, all-volunteer staff.

 

If you receive a rejection, please wait at least a month before submitting again: we love you, but a mag’s gotta breathe, you know?

 

Hot Tips

Double space your work. Some of our staff needs it for readability! Single-spaced poetry is okay, though.

 

We vastly prefer .doc and .docx files, although a PDF is okay in a pinch.

 

Don’t send us stuff that promotes bigotry and violence.

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: Nimrod International Journal

Nimrod International Journal welcomes submissions of poetry and short fiction. We publish two issues annually, and both issues contain work accepted as general submissions throughout the year. Our winter issue also features the winners and finalists of our annual Literary Awards.

Format

Each issue is approximately 130 pages, perfect bound with a four-color cover.

General Submissions

Accepted April 1-30 and November 1-30 each year. Turn-around time for general submissions is one to five months.

Prose: Work must be previously unpublished. 5,000 words maximum. Double-spaced.

Poetry: Work must be previously unpublished. 3-7 pages. One poem per page.

Payment

We pay $20 per poem/page of prose, with a maximum payment of $300. All contributors will also receive two copies of the issue in which their work appears. 

 

Submission Fee: $3.00

 

For more information, visit our website or join us on Facebook or Twitter.

 

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: The Meetinghouse Magazine

the basics:

• We accept up to two pieces of prose, five poems, and five 2D artworks per submission

• Please submit prose pieces as separate documents, poems in a single document, and visual pieces, including a list of works, in one document if possible.

• Please keep each submission under 7,500 words.

• Include a brief bio with your work.

• Please attach your submissions as a .doc, .docx, or .pdf. Artwork will also be accepted as .png and .jpg.

• On very rare occasions do we accept previously published work. Please let us know if that is the case with your piece.
  

• We accept simultaneous submissions, but please inform us if your work is accepted elsewhere.

• We publish work in translation. Translators are responsible for acquiring author and publisher permissions.

• Authors retain the copyright to their work.

• We accept work by both published and previously unpublished authors.

• We can offer you some money: $40 for content published digitally, $100 for prose published in print, $50 for each poem published in print, and $100 per artwork published in print.

likes:

• We appreciate genre-bending & genre-blending.

• We believe trying and failing to work through difficult ideas and feelings is more worthwhile than staying comfortable in what you know. Asking questions is better than answering them.

• We very badly want to be kind.

dislikes:

• We’re put off by snark or fashion in lieu of rigorous thinking.

• We will not consider discriminatorily offensive or hateful content for publication.

• Please do not use Courier.

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: The Disappointed Housewife

The Disappointed Housewife seeks fiction, essays, and poetry – along with unclassifiable writings, photos, and drawings – that stretch genre definitions, break the rules, challenge readers, and bend their brains, all while maintaining the highest levels of style and substance.

We think that literature has to evolve, that it should keep up with the world around it even if it doesn’t reflect it so much as use it. Taunt it. Remold it, when required.

We’re looking for stories that strike us as different, always with that idiosyncratic touch. Iconoclastic. Kind of bent. Humorous. Poems that find the metaphors we’ve been looking for but never quite landed on. Essays that take us away from the usual and into the world of the unseen and overlooked.

Above all, The Disappointed Housewife is a literary journal. We aren’t looking for genre material, though if your submission manipulates a genre in a literary way, we might just bite.

A little more specifically: we aren’t interested in romance, science fiction, thrillers, horror, fantasy, or erotica in their typical forms. We’ll cut you some slack, though. Just be sure that your work adheres to the general mission of The Disappointed Housewife.

Which is, to put it more plainly, to provide readers with great writing they can’t get anyplace else.

Submit your previously unpublished work by email to:

thedisappointedhousewife@gmail.com 

and paste the entire submission in the body of the email. We do not open unsolicited attachments. For poetry, do your best to recreate line breaks and other layout elements in the email, with the understanding that it will appear on the site, if it’s accepted, exactly the way you want it. For all submissions, provide a brief bio written in the third person; feel free to include links to your work available online.

By submitting to The Disappointed Housewife, you grant us first electronic rights, nonexclusive anthology rights, and archival rights should the work be accepted. All rights revert back to you after publication. If you elect to publish the piece elsewhere, you agree to cite The Disappointed Housewife as the original publisher.

We do consider simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere while under consideration here. Submit to only one category at a time.

Understand that if your work is accepted, you will likely not be able to publish it elsewhere (i.e., at another, perhaps more famous, magazine). Most outlets don’t consider previously published material, and your piece’s appearance here will be considered a publication.

If your work is rejected, please wait thirty days before your next submission. If your work is accepted and published, we ask that you wait one year before submitting new material.

Flash fiction and creative nonfiction should be 1000 words or less. Submit only one piece at a time. Submit up to three poems. For items that are harder to categorize (lists, faux official documents, parodic advertising, humorous-text tattoos …), we’ll know the right length when we see it, but understand that exceptions to the word limit are going to be rare.

A word on form

There’s so much that can be done in terms of the way readers “read” literature now. Words on a page, sure. But you could construct a short story entirely in tweets or phone texts. Or handwrite poetry on 3 x 5 index cards and photograph them (please write legibly). A photo slide show with enigmatic captions. A facsimile of someone’s job application. The menu of a hip restaurant that’s on the forefront of insect haute cuisine. A story made up of urls that readers click on to go on a virtual journey.

There’s a story in almost anything that’s written, even if it was told unintentionally.

In other words, writers who can think of unorthodox and offbeat ways to tell their stories will be highly appreciated here at The Disappointed Housewife.

We hope to be challenged, and if your idea isn’t easily translated to basic website conventions, we’ll work with you to figure out a way to get it out there.

Think multimedia. Think imagistic. Sound clips. Facsimile. DIY. Objects as literature. “The medium is the message.”

A (discouraging) word on payment: None.

One day we might be able to pay writers for their contributions, but for now it’s a labor of love on all fronts.

Call for Pitches of Personal Essays Related to Holidays: Noah Michelson at HuffPost

I'm taking pitches for personal essays related to the holidays for
@HuffPost

Personal Especially looking for folks from diverse backgrounds / with diverse experiences 

If we accept a piece, we pay! Submit to:

pitch@huffpost.com

Especially interested in stories about: grieving at the holidays / parenting at the holidays / relationships and sex at the holidays / seeing (or refusing to see) family that voted differently than you at the holidays / creating new holiday traditions but really open to anything

1. I need to see a draft before I know if it's a fit

2. Only taking personal essays, not op-eds or service pieces

3. 1000-2000 words is our sweet spot but if more words are warranted, I'm not opposed

4. There should be some kind of perspective / takeaway for the reader at the end 

--Noah Michelson